Horror! Comics! Anger!

Main Menu

Little Deaths (2011) [REVIEW]

Not all that long ago I made a joke where I said something about “man-thology”. What that meant, I really had no idea. In retrospect, I missed a good opportunity to say something far more relevant like “Wolfman-thology”, or even, “More like The Wolfman-thology Cometh, am I right?!” It sucks that I fucked that stuff up so badly, because here I am watching another anthology. The “Little” of the title refers to short films, and the “Deaths” refers to, well I’m sure you already know. In addition to being a horror anthology with the unifying theme being death, I also read that sex was going to be another common theme. If sex and death go hand in hand for each segment of this movie, I knew I was in for a good time. Correction, not a good time, a terrible time, because sex and death don’t normally go together. Well, if you’re some kind of goth they go together, but I’m a few fishnet gauntlets away from being a true goth. What the fuck am I talking about? Who cares, here’s the review.

The first story, entitled “House & Home“, follows a yuppy couple (Luke de Lacey and Siubhan Harrison) who are clearly unsatisfied with each other sexually. We hear them discussing some sort of plans of another person they are planning on meeting, only to realize this third individual is a homeless woman that they are able to drug and hold captive. We see this woman being raped by the man, who..we’ll say treats quite poorly! When it’s his wife’s turn, he goes to take a shower. He hears screaming as he exits the shower and sees the homeless woman, no longer bound or gagged, straddling his wife. The homeless woman is now a demon who chases him into the street, but is caught by more homeless demons. The story ends with this husband being bound to a wall and the homeless demons mention keeping him alive for a few weeks so they can prolong the torture. As far as what this segment was going for, I’m unsure, other than it was a fun twist for the viewer. Rather than in something like I Spit On Your Grave, where the raped female uses her wits to get payback, these demons just completely destroy this guy’s life. Maybe a little bit more rewarding of a revenge than other films, which he completely deserved, because what he did to her was pretty darned gross!

Maybe “goth” isn’t the right term, as this might be considered more “industrial”, but that’s such a joke of a genre of music that I can’t think of a single band that makes that shit for a joke here.

The next segment, entitled “Mutant Tools,” gets even more bizarre and follows two groups of characters. One group is a couple, with the woman (Jodie Jameson) dealing drugs and the man (Daniel Brocklebank) providing a doctor (Brendan Gregory) with a mysterious organ that he kills people for. The other group is an older employee (Christopher Fairbank) training a new employee (Jason Maza) in the ways of keeping someone, who has a giant monster-sized dong, so that all the sperm in this thing’s body drains into a bucket. That sperm is used to create a hallucinogen that the very same doctor uses to make medicine, and apparently the organs he gets from the other guy is what he feeds to the monster-wanged person that is held captive. This doctor starts prescribing the woman from the couple the drug, which makes her hallucinate and eventually grow a monster weiner of her own. The boyfriend is killed, his organs fed to her, and now she is the sperm donator. This one was a little more perverse/bizarre, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I did wish there was a little bit more of an explanation as to how that hoohah got so monster-sized and how it made her grow one. I’m talking three-feet long, which was mostly just shown swaying in the goddamn breeze like a tire swing at your grandmother’s house. The employee who was training the other one mentioned something about Nazis being the first to discover this activity, and the doctor is seen looking over documents with swastikas on them, but that’s it. This segment felt like you watched a director’s cut of a Nine Inch Nails video, if it had unholy relations with a Marilyn Manson video.

What kind of a weirdo just has animal masks laying around?! Heh…heh……

The last segment, entitled “Bitch,” followed another unhappy couple. While at a club, the boyfriend (Tom Sawyer) mentions wanting to go home, but the girlfriend (Kate Braithwaite) mentions she has been invited to go out with the band who was playing. When the boyfriend gets home, he remains grumpy, so he strips off his clothes, puts on a dog mask, and starts pissing on a pile of her clothes. When she gets home the next morning, she’s upset by this, so she wakes him up and gets him out of the doghouse he sleeps in, rubs his face in it, and then fucks his butt with a strap-on dildo. That’ll teach him! Clearly, this couple has a routine of the woman publicly demeaning/humiliating him, and in their private lives, he acts like a dog, which seems to make them both content. In one scene, we see the couple on a walk and pass by a group of dogs, causing the girlfriend to start freaking out and crying hysterically. I got the sense that she had some dog-related trauma in her life, because that’s how intuitive I am. The humiliation continues when the girlfriend tries to start a threesome with her boyfriend’s best “mate,” because they’re all British, but the boyfriend refrains. He gets naked and crawls into the room wearing his dog mask and she barely notices him. This can be considered his snap back to reality, as he then destroys the mask and doghouse, causing his girlfriend to freak out. As if rejecting his role as the dog isn’t enough, he starts collecting dogs on his own in a different building. The boyfriend eventually tries to “make up” with his girlfriend, she accepts, and allows him to handcuff her naked to their bed. That’s when he gets some hot beef stew, pours it all over the butthole and vagina area, then releases the dogs into their bedroom. He walks out of her apartment, and presumably her life, while listening to her screams. This was a much longer segment than the other two, and was clearly more grounded in reality. The writing and acting were good, and this couple really felt genuine. Even though there might not be a couple exactly like this out in the real world, it’s not too far a leap to make to picture these people as your neighbors. The ending is what really unsettled me about this movie. Despite the girlfriend putting her boyfriend through psychological abuse as opposed to physical, the “revenge” still seemed a little too intense. Granted, it is never implied that anything violent happens to the girlfriend because of the dogs, but it really had me conflicted. On the one hand, I thought it was a really satisfying revenge, but then I remember that the boyfriend was allowing this to happen to himself and he could have left at any time. Yeah, that’s going to be my final thought on the matter so I can at least have made a decision. The retribution was unjustified because he put himself in that abusive relationship, as opposed to the way revenge was handled in the first segment. Got it, moving on.

No comment.

I mentioned earlier that the theme of this movie was sex and death, and I really think these segments went together quite well within that theme. Each segment was filthy, grimy, perverse, and just plain weird. Does this mean I “liked” the movie? Well, I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to say it was an enjoyable experience. In fact, I’d say it was an unpleasant experience. Does that mean it’s getting a bad rating? No, not at all. Just because I didn’t enjoy myself doesn’t mean that the filmmakers didn’t succeed with their intentions. Each segment was the appropriate length, giving enough information to feel satisfied but ending before all questions were answered. All segments stuck with their theme, and even if you prefer one segment to another, they all featured decent acting, directing, and special effects. I felt uncomfortable watching it and think that you, as a reader, should be nervous of anyone who tells you this is their favorite film. Similar to how I felt after watching A Serbian Film, this movie really made you rethink the way that sex is portrayed in films as well as in our culture. Despite the warnings of the sex and death, I’m sure people will seek this out just in hopes of seeing some boobs. Sure, you see boobs, but you feel pretty fucking disgusting after everything else you see that it almost makes you never want to look at boobs again……………….almost.

Watched this last night. It was very… I’m not sure the word to use. As for how she grew a monster cock, well judging by the staples and some earlier conversation I believe it was grafted on, and damn you’re intuitive Wolfman.

Agree that, just because this movie is uncomfortable, and may make you briefly question ones love of boobs, it is in no means a bad movie.